Easily Dispensable: Iraq's
Children

Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized
society.- Joan Ganz Cooney

If, as I would like to believe, the above quote suggests all
children and not merely those born in Western democracies, I
am no longer certain that we live in a civilized society.

That women and children suffer the most during times of war
is not a new phenomenon. It is a reality as old as war
itself. What Rumsfeld, Rice and other war criminals of the
Cheney administration prefer to call "collateral damage"
translates in English as the inexcusable murder of and other
irreparable harm done to women, children and the elderly
during any military offensive.

US foreign policy in
the Middle East manifests itself most starkly in its impact
on the children of Iraq. It is they who continue to pay with
their lives and futures for the brutal follies of our
administration. Starvation under sanctions, and death and
suffering during war and occupation are their lot. Since the
beginning of the occupation, Iraqi children have been
affected worst by the violence generated by the occupying
forces and the freedom fighters.

While I had witnessed
several instances of this from the time of my first trip to
Iraq in November 2003, I was shaken by a close encounter
with it, a year later, in November 2004.

In a major
Baghdad hospital, 12-year-old Fatima Harouz lay in her bed, dazed, amidst a crowded
hospital room. She limply waved her bruised arm at the flies
that buzzed over the bed. Her shins, shattered by bullets
when American soldiers fired through the front door of her
house, were both covered in casts. Small plastic drainage
bags filled with red fluid sat upon her abdomen, where she
had taken shrapnel from another bullet.

She was from
Latifiya, a city just south of Baghdad. Three days before I
saw her, soldiers had attacked her home. Her mother,
standing with us in the hospital, said, "They attacked our
home and there weren't even any resistance fighters in our
area." Her brother had been shot and killed, his wife
wounded, and their home ransacked by soldiers. "Before they
left, they killed all of our chickens," added Fatima's
mother, her eyes a mixture of fear, shock and rage. A doctor
who was with us as Fatima's mother narrated the story looked
at me and sternly asked, "This is the freedom … in their
Disney Land are there kids just like this?"

The
doctors' anger was mild if we consider the magnitude of
suffering that has been inflicted upon the children of Iraq
as a direct result of first the US-backed sanctions and then
the failed US occupation.

In a report released by the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on May 2nd of this
year, one out of three Iraqi children is malnourished and
underweight.

The report states that 25% of Iraqi children
between the ages of six months and five years old suffer
from either acute or chronic malnutrition. In addition, the
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) press release
on the matter added, "A 2004 Living Conditions Survey
indicated a decrease in mortality rates among children under
five years old since 1999. However, the results of a
September 2005 Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis -
commissioned by Iraq's Central Organization for Statistics
and Information Technology, the World Food Program and
UNICEF - showed worsening conditions since the April 2003
US-led invasion of the country."

Also this month, on
May 15th , a news story about the same UN-backed
government survey highlighted that "people are struggling to
cope three years after US-forces overthrew Saddam Hussein."
The report added that "Children are ... major victims of
food insecurity," and described the situation as "alarming."
The story continued, "A total of four million Iraqis,
roughly 15 percent of the population, were in dire need of
humanitarian aid including food, up from 11 percent in a
2003 report, the survey of more than 20,000 Iraqi households
found.… Decades of conflict and economic sanctions have had
serious effects on Iraqis. Their consequences have been
rising unemployment, illiteracy and, for some families, the
loss of wage earners."

But the hearts
of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in
this world can twist them into curious shapes.-
Carson McCullers

Iraq's ministries
of Health and Planning carried out the survey with support
from the UN World Food Program and UNICEF. A spokesman for
UNICEF's Iraq Support Center in Amman, Jordan, David Singh,
told Reuters that the number of acutely malnourished
children in Iraq had more than doubled, from 4% during the
last year of Saddam's rule to at least 9% in 2005. He also
said, "Until there is a period of relative stability in Iraq
we are going to continue to face these kinds of problems."
UNICEF's special representative for Iraq, Roger Wright,
commenting on the dire effects of the situation, said, "This
can irreversibly hamper the young child's optimal
mental/cognitive development, not just their physical
development."

This past March, an article titled "Garbage Dump Second Home for Iraqi
Children" addressed the appalling situation in the
northern, Kurdish-controlled Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah
where young children assist their families in searching the
city garbage dumps. It said that children as young as seven
often accompany their parents to the dumps before school, in
order to look for reusable items such as shoes, clothing and
electrical equipment which is then resold in order to
augment the family income.

This disturbing news is not
really news in Baghdad. Back in December 2004 I saw children
living with their families in the main
dump of the capital city.

Poverty in Iraq has
plummeted acutely during the invasion and occupation. Those
who were already surviving on the margins due to years of
deprivation have sunk further, and the children of such
families have recourse to no nutrition, no health care, no
education, no present and no future. Those from less
unfortunate backgrounds are now suffering because the family
wage earner has been killed, detained, or lost employment.
Or the source of the family's income, a shop, factory or
farm have been destroyed, or simply because it is impossible
to feed a family under the existing economic conditions of
high costs and low to nil income in Iraq.

As execrable
as the current situation is for Iraqi children, most of the
world media, appallingly, does not see it as a story to be
covered. Even back in November 2004, surveys conducted by
the UN, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government showed
that acute malnutrition among young children had nearly
doubled since the US-led invasion took place in the spring
of 2004.

A Washington Post story, "Children Pay
Cost of Iraq's Chaos," read, "After the rate of acute
malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined
to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this
year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health
Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied
International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The
new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children
suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by
chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein."

Not only is the US occupation starving Iraq's children, but
occupation forces regularly detain them as well. It is
common knowledge in Iraq that there have been child
prisoners in the most odious prisons, such as Abu Ghraib,
since early on in the occupation. While most, if not all,
corporate media outlets in the US have been loath to visit
the subject, the Sunday Herald in Scotland reported back in August 2004 that
"coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in
jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees
- some as young as 10 - are also being subjected to rape and
torture."

The story read, "It was early last October
that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says he witnessed the rape of a boy
prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq. 'The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the
doors with sheets,' he said in a statement given to
investigators probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. 'Then,
when I heard the screaming I climbed the door … and I saw
[the soldier's name is deleted] who was wearing a military
uniform." Hilas, who was himself threatened with being
sexually assaulted in Abu Ghraib, then described in horrific
detail how the soldier raped 'the little kid.'"

The
newspaper's investigation at that time concluded that there
were as many as 107 children being held by occupation
forces, although their names were not known, nor their
location or the length of their detention.

In June
2004 an internal UNICEF report, which was not made public,
noted widespread arrest and detention of Iraqi children by
US and UK forces. A section of the report titled "Children
in Conflict with the Law or with Coalition Forces," stated,
"In July and August 2003, several meetings were conducted
with CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) … and Ministry of
Justice to address issues related to juvenile justice and
the situation of children detained by the coalition forces …
UNICEF is working through a variety of channels to try and
learn more about conditions for children who are imprisoned
or detained, and to ensure that their rights are
respected."

Another section of the report added,
"Information on the number, age, gender and conditions of
incarceration is limited. In Basra and Karbala children
arrested for alleged activities targeting the occupying
forces are reported to be routinely transferred to an
internee facility in Um Qasr. The categorization of these
children as 'internees' is worrying since it implies
indefinite holding without contact with family, expectation
of trial or due process." The report went on to add, "A
detention centre for children was established in Baghdad,
where according to ICRC (International Committee of the Red
Cross) a significant number of children were detained.
UNICEF was informed that the coalition forces were planning
to transfer all children in adult facilities to this
'specialized' child detention centre. In July 2003, UNICEF
requested a visit to the centre but access was denied. Poor
security in the area of the detention centre has prevented
visits by independent observers like the ICRC since last
December [2003]."

A section of the report which I
found very pertinent, as I'd already witnessed this
occurring in Iraq, stated, "The perceived unjust detention
of Iraqi males, including youths, for suspected activities
against the occupying forces has become one of the leading
causes for the mounting frustration among Iraqi youth and
the potential for radicalization of this population
group."

On December 17, 2003, at the al-Shahid Adnan
Kherala secondary school in Baghdad, I witnessed US forces
detain 16 children who had held a mock, non-violent,
pro-Saddam Hussein the previous day. While forces from the
First Armored Division sealed the school with two large
tanks, helicopters, several Bradley fighting vehicles and at
least 10 Humvees, soldiers loaded the children into a
covered truck and drove them to their base. Meanwhile, the
rest of the students remained locked inside the school until
the US military began to exit the area.

Shortly
thereafter the doors were unlocked, releasing the frightened
students who flocked out the doors. The youngest were 12
years old, and none of the students were older than 18. They
ran out, many in tears, while others were enraged as they
kicked and shook the front gate. My interpreter and I were
surrounded by frenzied students who yelled, "This is the
democracy? This is the freedom? You see what the Americans
are doing to us here?"

Another student cried out to
us, "They took several of my friends! Why are they taking
them to prison? For throwing rocks?" A few blocks away we
spoke with a smaller group of students who had run from the
school (in panic). One student who was crying yelled to me,
"Why are they doing this to us? We are only kids!"

The
tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles that were guarding the
perimeter of the school began to rumble down the street
beside us, on their passage out. Several young boys with
tears streaming down their faces picked up stones and hurled
them at the tanks as they drove by. Imagine my horror when I
saw the US soldiers on top of the Bradleys begin firing
their M-16's above our heads as we ducked inside a taxi. A
soldier on another Bradley, behind the first, passed and
fired randomly above our heads as well. Kids and pedestrians
ran for cover into the shops and wherever possible.

I
remember a little boy, not more than 13 years old, holding a
stone and standing at the edge of the street glaring at the
Bradleys as they rumbled past. Another soldier riding atop
another passing Bradley pulled out his pistol and aimed it
at the boy's head and kept him in his sights until the
vehicle rolled out of sight.

One of the students
hiding behind our taxi screamed to me, "Who are the
terrorists here now? You have seen this yourself! We are
school kids!"

The very next month, in January 2004, I
was in an area on the outskirts of Baghdad that had been
pulverized by "Operation Iron Grip." I spoke with a man at
his small farm house. His three year old boy, Halaf Ziad
Halaf, walked up to me and with a worried look on his face said, "I have
seen the Americans here with their tanks. They want to
attack us."

His uncle, who had joined us for tea,
leaned over to me and said, "The Americans are creating the
terrorists here by hurting people and causing their
relatives to fight against them. Even this little boy will
grow up hating the Americans because of their policy
here."

The slaughter, starvation, detention, torture
and sexual assault of Iraq's children at the hands of US
soldiers or by proxy via US foreign policy, is not a recent
phenomenon. It is true that the present US administration
has been brazen and blatant in its crimes in Iraq, but those
willing to bear witness must not forget that Bill Clinton
and his minions played an equally, if not even more
devastating role in the assault on the children of Iraq.

On May 12, 1996, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright was asked by Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes" about the
effects of US sanctions against Iraq, "We have heard that a
half million children have died. I mean, that's more
children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price
worth it?"

In a response which has now become
notorious, Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard
choice, but the price - we think the price is worth
it."

We are guilty of many errors and
many faults but our worst crime is abandoning the children,
neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need
can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones
are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses
are being developed. To him we cannot answer "Tomorrow." His
name is "Today."- Gabriela
Mistral

To all Americans who,
despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, continue to
believe that they are supporting a war for democracy in
Iraq, I would like to say, the way Iraq is headed it will
have little use for democracy and freedom. We must find ways
to stop the immoral, soulless, repugnant occupation if we
want the children of Iraq to see any future at
all.

*************

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who spent over 8
months reporting from occupied Iraq. He presented evidence
of US war crimes in Iraq at the International Commission of
Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush
Administration in New York City in January 2006. He writes
regularly for TruthOut, Inter Press Service, Asia Times and
TomDispatch, and maintains his own web site, dahrjamailiraq.com.

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